Marinara sauce can be used to make spaghetti, lasagna and pasta. It can also be used as pizza crust and over meat ball. Actually, it’s a yummy dip as well.

Italian Basic Marinara Sauce

Marinara is an Italian tomato sauce which is good starting point for many recipes. I personally believe, the sauce is a base. You need to add mincemeat to turn it into bolognese. Or cheese and more seasoning to turn it into spaghetti sauce. For pizza, I have mentioned the variation ahead.

I even use it to make my chicken Manchurian when I don’t have time to make tomato puree. I use a mix of marinara sauce and ketchup. It works just great for Manchurian or sweet and sour chicken. I know, I’m mixing Chinese cuisine with American and Italian. But desi love doing this. After all, it should taste good, right?

Texture:

The rustic marinara sauce is supposed to have bit of tomato texture. This is attained best with tomatoes that are skinned. So you don’t need to blend it in food processor. Just breaking with wooden spatula works.

Since, we are using fresh tomatoes, and I’m not skinning 2 kg tomatoes, I just blend and strain the tomato puree through a coarse sieve and that removes the skin and seeds giving a very smooth sauce.

Great way to use those Seasonal Tomatoes

This sauce is totally worth making when fresh and cheap tomatoes are available. I’m simply going to freeze it and use it to make pasta and pizza for kids. My boys just love it and having a prepared sauce makes it very easy.

For Pizza Crust:

This sauce is still thin for pizza crust, you may simmer it for long with more oregano, green chillies, cumin powder, fresh coriander (I would add capsicum too) or just add tomato paste along with these ingredients and you are good to go with thick yummy pizza sauce.

For other stews and pasta the consistency is just right.

Chicken Stock:

Lastly, you may add chicken stock in it for extra flavor but that would be mean longer simmer time or you may add chicken cube for quick flavor fix.

Herbs:

If you can get your hands on fresh rosemary, parsley, celery, fennel or basil add to the sauce. Some people add carrot as well for rich color and thickness in the sauce.